Nobody Saves the World Is Another Notch in Drinkbox Studios' Belt

I’ve wanted to write something about Drinkbox Studios for a bit now. I played their Guacamelee and Guacamelee 2 back-to-back a few years ago, and genuinely enjoyed both of them quite a bit! But I never really got a handle on what I wanted to say about them.

They were both good games, solid Metroidvanias with well-designed maps and strong beat-em-up mechanics for combat. Maybe they weren’t the best entries in either genre, and there wasn’t really anything revolutionary about anything they did with either system. But they did genuinely do two things really well, which is no small task! I considered making another Genre Mash-up article, but never quite gathered enough other material, so I settled for praising them in my year-end review instead.

Maybe I couldn’t think of what to write then, but I knew I wanted to check out whatever they did next. Which happened to be this year’s new release, Nobody Saves the World, their first title since Guacamelee 2 four years ago. Nobody is a Top Down A-A game, with the notable new mechanic being that the titular Nobody is a shapeshifter who can jump between over a dozen forms. Each of those comes with its own handful of abilities to learn, and about a third of the way through the game, you get the ability to mix and match them across forms.

Monster Sanctuary Review: Mazes and Monsters and Min-Maxing, Oh My...

A little while ago, I began breaking down some of the video games from my 2020 Wrap-Up, offering a fuller appraisal of Phoenotopia: Awakening. Today, we’re hitting a second game from that year-end review, as I go more in depth on Moi Rai Games’ Monster Sanctuary.

For those who didn’t read the blurb for it in the Wrap-Up, the basic pitch for Monster Sanctuary is that it combines two fairly distinct game genres, something that I’ve written about here a few times. In this case, the two genres are Metroidvanias (another thing I’ve covered a lot) and Monster Taming* games (something that I haven’t covered, but which is exactly what it sounds like: think things like Pokémon, that involve collecting and/or training monsters).

*I’ve usually heard this term used, but it’s probably also worth noting that Steam uses the tag “Creature Collector” for this genre. I’m sure there are multiple other terms that people use as well, but these are the main ones that I’ll be sticking with.

This is a really novel combination, from what I can tell, which is actually kind of weird. Those two elements have always seemed like natural matches, in my mind. Growing up playing the 2D Pokémon games, they struck me in a lot of ways like the 2D Zelda games, just with HMs like Cut and Surf replacing Link’s equipment. And those 2D Zelda games and their genre-mates, at their best, seemed a lot like Metroidvanias that you controlled on a different axis. Think about it; they’d plop you down in an overworld with arbitrary obstacles, which you could overcome as you explored and found new gear and found secret branches to new areas… Pokémon quit never went that far, using its obstacles as plain roadblocks along a linear path. But they could have, if they wanted to, as could any aspiring game developer.

Quarantine Game Recs: Murder By Numbers

I’ve written before about my interest in video games that mash-up different genres and the interesting results that it can yield. Today’s mini-recommendation revisits that topic, with Murder by Numbers by developers Mediatonic (another title that I played on Switch, with a PC version available on Steam as well).



I haven’t covered it as much as some other things, but I’m a huge fan of Picross/Nonagram games. My gold standard for the series has long been Jupiter’s Picross S, which are sort of the platonic ideal of the format. The user interface is intuitive, there are a variety of modes and extra features, the puzzles are solid, and generally, they’re just all around well-executed games.

But they’re also extremely straightforward: if you want no-frills logic puzzles, you get no-frills logic puzzles. Granted, that’s not nothing! Plenty of other games try to offer that same thing, but don’t produce a Picross experience that’s as well-polished as Jupiter’s games. But it seems like something that one could easily build upon by combining it with something more than just super-refined Picross gameplay. I’ve seen a few games attempt that, but so far, Murder By Numbers is by far my favorite implementation of that idea.

The idea is pretty simple, although there are a few clever touches that add to the overall game. It’s a combination of mystery visual novels and adventure games with Picross puzzles, where one of your (amateur) detectives is a robot with a faulty visual processor. You look in the field for clues that serve as your items to use, but the robot needs to “decipher” what it’s seeing, by way of you solving the puzzle. It’s a really elegant explanation on a lot of levels (“Why do I need to “solve” the thing I’m looking at? Why is it so blocky?” etc.).

Of course, the biggest of those levels that it succeeds is the most basic one as well. It’s not really a secret that many detective games have a pretty major flaw, in that an investigation is a massive, open-ended thing, and it’s hard to map that onto a full range of choices for the player, particularly in a way that doesn’t also guide them to an answer.* It’s not something that totally ruins the genre, but it is a notable quirk that regularly pops up. I don’t know that Murder by Numbers totally solves that issue; it is entirely possible for you to figure out the solution to a case well before your detectives do, for instance.

*For those wishing for a more in-depth look at this and how other games have tackled it (to varying success), Game Makers’ Toolkit of course has a good episode on the issue.


But I do think it does a few things to help cover this issue. Part of it is, of course, going for a narrative justification. Honor and S.C.O.U.T., the detective duo of the game, are amateurs tackling a whodunit out of necessity rather than any sort of training or interest, and you’re very clearly guiding around these existing characters rather than inserting yourself into the player character role. That narrative justification… doesn’t totally solve or excuse the issue, but it does prime the player to be a little more receptive of things



The other trick, though, is more interesting, I think. Essentially, Murder By Numbers presents the player with in-game actions that operate on a symbolic level for the thing they’re standing in for, sort of like a Metaphorical Mechanic. For example, whodunit stories operate on some level with logical deduction; you take the separate pieces you have, fit them together based on what you know, and slowly, the explanation takes shape.

And that’s why Picross puzzles make for a genius stand-in, as a game mechanic: it’s a literal example of the same process. The puzzles give you a grid and a set of numbers telling you how many of the squares need to be filled in, and whether there are any gaps between them. Slowly by surely, you use logic to fill in squares and mark out gaps in some lines, which gives you a rough outline, which you can then use to get a more defined picture in other lines, and so on, a feedback loop based on all of the random data you’re presented at the start.

There are other ways the game’s systems line up with detective stories, too. For example, you find the evidence puzzles by doing sweeps of the crime scene visually, with a sensor indicating whether you’re close. And 100% completion of the game relies on finding every clue. So thoroughness is rewarded, and the easiest way to ensure that thoroughness is developing a systematic, comprehensive search of each scene, and being sure to check those scenes regularly to see if new context has made any new clues stand out. It might sound exhausting, but the developers did a good job of balancing things, so no one scene is too overwhelming in size, and there are also additional UI tells you come to expect to let you know when you’re done with a region. Once again, being able to observe the small details as a detective would is a plus.

There are other nice things about combining the two styles of games, too. Tying the puzzles to a story progression allows for a nice sense of forward progress that some purer Picross games lack. Sometimes, when playing the latter, I’ll find myself zoning out and just doing puzzle after puzzle, even when I’m no longer in the mood to keep playing them, just because the end of one puzzle and the start of the next can just bleed into each other, one endless string of filling out rows and columns. I never had that in Murder By Numbers, as there’s a pretty clear ebb and flow to the scenes that makes it clear when you can take a break and come back later.

It also helps that the non-Picross half of the game is a good, pulpy whodunit mystery serial of a visual novel that can stand on its own. The setup is simple: S.C.O.U.T. is a robot who wakes up in a Hollywood dump with no memories. He seeks out Honor, co-star of a popular network murder mystery series, thinking she’s a real detective who can help him rather than an actor. But the pair suddenly ends up being forced into solving real murder mysteries when Honor’s showrunner inexplicably fires her and immediately turns up dead.



The game is pretty clearly modeled after the type of show Honor stars in, subdivived into four episodes where the duo of new partners show up at places just after some murder has taken place and deciding to find clues and question suspects to piece together what happened (as well as find a few other clues pointing to a larger overall mystery). I don’t know that it will win over non-fans of the genre, but if you like this type of story, Murder By Numbers knows what it’s doing and executes the style well.

It helps that the character design and art direction are both pretty strong as well, with a distinctive cartoon style and a nice blend of archetypes and characters quirks for the former, and a period 1990s aesthetic that’s apparent yet tastefully understated for the latter. The music also leans into that era, with a smooth jazz-inspired soundtrack that’s a little cheesy, but I still appreciated it (especially in the context of soundtracks for other Picross games or similar titles, which often get repetitive much quicker than this one).

In all, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Murder By Numbers. The game ends on a sequel hook, and its genre and episodic format would make it well suited to more entries, so I would be excited to see this become a recurring series. It’s certainly a bright spot amongst the sea of Picross video games out there, and worth checking out.

Forget Genres, Cadence of Hyrule Seamlessly Mashes-Up Entire Series

I’ve been slowly working my way through some of the indie game backlog on my Switch, and wanted to do a few shorter reviews of games that especially jumped out at me, starting with something I hinted was coming in my last piece on video games: Brace Yourself Games’ Legend of Zelda spin-off, Cadence of Hyrule.

(The music is of course great, as both series are known for their soundtracks. So why not check out a sample as backing music while reading this review?)

One of my earlier favorite pickups for the Switch was BYG’s original Crypt of the Necrodancer, a game I had heard a lot of good things about but never gotten around to trying. It went on sale on the Switch, so I decided to finally try it out on a whim. And I wound up getting a lot playtime out of it! I had always been sort of iffy on dungeon crawler and roguelike/roguelite games for various reasons, but Crypt took the best parts of those two genres and used them to balance each other out, all set to a banging soundtrack that made it an even more interesting rhythm game.

Giving each move in the dungeon crawler the strict time limit of a beat in a song kept you from overthinking and over-optimizing every move, and tying the dungeon sizes to the length of songs kept them from becoming too sprawling or overwhelming and made the threat of having to start over not feel completely dispiriting. Conversely, the rogue-lite elements mean you get to try different styles of play rather than just following your optimized plan, and there’s only minimal planning you even could do before tackling each level, plus the music helped to telegraph enemy attack patterns so that you learn how to navigate each world quicker. On the whole, it was a really neat little system.

Meanwhile, I’ve written before about my love for The Legend of Zelda series, especially the 2D entries. I’m always excited for more entries into whatever-that-genre-is-called (maybe I’ll tackle that issue another day), but tying it to Crypt of the Necrodancer’s systems posed some interesting clashes. Legend of Zelda isn’t really known for small procedurally-generated worlds, or for losing all your gear regularly and starting over, or for randomization, or for strict rules on movement, or any number of other things that could have tripped up the developers. When the game was first announced, all of those questions and more made it seem interesting, but like something that would be more of a novelty, something like a new Crypt of the Necrodancer but with Link plopped in as in Soul Calibur II, or a Zelda spin-off with added focus on music instead of, say, multiplayer.

Instead, though, Brace Yourself Games hit the perfect balance of the two; Cadence of Hyrule feels like both a Zelda game and a Crypt sequel, with enough new ideas brought to the table to make it not feel like it solely belongs to one series or the other. Areas were the two might have clashed have been reconciled in ways that keep them feeling true to both games. It really is a hybrid of the two series, which on the whole makes it feel like a new and exciting experience.

A Study in Video Game Genre Mash-Ups: Indie Game Recs

For most of what I can remember while growing up playing video games, it felt like the idea of mashing up distinct genres into a single game was somewhat frowned upon. And that’s not entirely unfair, in all honesty. Some larger studios especially often take a “throw it all in” approach that can leave titles feeling like a collection of unfocused or half-baked ideas. And even if they are pulled off somewhat well, it can still feel really confusing for players as to why, say, a Sonic the Hedgehog game needed a fishing game mode that clashes pretty severely with the main gameplay.

But just like every other design decision that a game studio can make, it’s just another tool in the toolbox, and it can be done well! The answer to those two problems seems pretty obvious, in retrospect: limit your focus to just what you feel you can do well, and only include the new elements if you can find a natural way to connect it to the game’s main idea. I want to focus today on some of the different approaches that games can take to pull off a natural feeling genre mash-up, specifically through the lens of a couple of indie games that have managed to walk that tightrope and come out of the experience with some brilliant games.